Daily Reads:
The 37 Signals tenets were part inspiration for some of the work I did with JL and the rest on the team. Re-reading the manifesto on Fathers Day reminded me of this one tenet that I seemingly have forgotten for myself. Tenet 21 Know no: "No is no to one thing. Yes is no to many things."
Eric Sun prepares for the last performance of his life. This video from a few years ago needs no words, just a box of tissues, or standing in the rain afterwards.
Anne Helen Petersen describes a time in her life that might well have been my own in The Sterile World of Infinite Choice. The most resonant paragraph of all was this: It’s all very paradoxical: that the ability to constantly communicate has made us bad communicators, that instant access to all forms of entertainment would leave us with so few touchstones, that surveilling kids doesn’t necessarily make them safer, that the absence of limitations also often means the absence of creativity — and that the particular form of abundance we’ve fetishized can feel so sad, so unspeakably sterile.
Gartner says that Generative AI has, rapidly, reached the peak of inflated expectations. Women in particular have been calling out the problems with AI systems for a much longer time. Today I came across this article that suggests that AI has the potential to destroy value: "A lot of the people trying to deploy AI as a business solution are doing it because they don’t know how to measure what’s valuable about their business. A claim I’m certain will get my technophile friends agitated.
Gary Marcus has another stinger piece on AI. Not to say that LLM’s don’t have a place, but I hear echoes of another recent technology’s commercial rise and fall
A X that headlinesThe tool that feels right in your hands is interpreted as an extension of the human body
Simon Willison talk at WordCamp 2023 is worth a listen.
QOTD:
Many people mow their lawns because that’s what they’ve always done. There’s a perception that a close-mown lawn demonstrates you’re caring for the garden more. – Steve Coghill, from this article
Music:
Alison Balsom performing Haydn Trumpet in Eb, 1st Movement